Computer networks are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to manage. This is driven in part by the ever-increasing variety of network devices, computers, and software being combined together to integrate large enterprise-based intranets with the Internet. Network management tools have been produced to monitor these complex combinations of hardware and software and help troubleshoot network failures when they occurred.
Traditional network management tools use a protocol called simple network management protocol (SNMP) to monitor network devices such as routers, switches, hubs, remote access devices, or even computers in a network The protocol used to interface with SNMP includes rudimentary commands to operate on data such as to “get” a variable, “set” a variable, or “test” a variable. These commands typically are deployed from a central network management server (NMS) within the network to a network device connected to the network. The network device processes one or more of these rudimentary commands and then returns the results to the NMS for further processing and analysis. In these systems, little or no processing or analysis is performed by the network devices. Instead, the NMS is saddled with the responsibility of receiving the results as well as performing the complex analyses associated with monitoring network operation and performance.